"The Great Norway Adventure," an uffda-accented TV show that blended "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race" with goat cheese, herring and swimming in fjords, did so well in its debut last year -- it was Norway's top-rated reality series -- that the producers are going to do it again. They've put out another casting call, looking for "fun, outgoing Americans with Norwegian ancestry" to compete in "a series of extreme cultural challenges that test their skills, courage and determination." There has to be a barrel of lutefisk in there somewhere. But while season one had 10 Norwegian-Americans facin

A three-year freeze in spending on many domestic programs, which President Barack Obama is expected to call for when he delivers his first State of the Union message to Congress on Wednesday, likely would have little effect on commodity subsidies and other major farm programs, Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., said. "We expected this," said Peterson, who as chairman of the House Agriculture Committee plays a key role in writing the nation's five-year farm bill. "At one time, they were talking about taking a 5 percent cut" at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, he said.

Carl Larson, 95, sits at his kitchen table these days and writes. Mostly, he writes thank-you notes to people who sent flowers, wrote letters or signed cards of sympathy for the loss of his brother Bill, 98, who died of exposure last month after wandering from the farm home they shared outside Oklee, Minn. But one terse note, addressed to "the ones that brought cake and sympathy cards to my home," went to the Oklee newspaper, which published it this week. "You took Bill's billfold," Carl wrote.

There is "no 'right' way" to deal with river ice, "no silver bullet" to prevent jams before a flood, one of the nation's leading authorities on ice jams said Monday. Kate White, a hydraulic engineer with the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H., arrived in Fargo on Monday, part of a team assembled by the Army Corps of Engineers to track the formation and movement of ice in the Red River flood. Dealing with ice jams, such as the 4-mile-long slab threatening bridges at Oslo, Minn., depends on such variables as ice thickness, water flow, what's happening upstream an

GRAND FORKS, N.D. - The Norwegian charm offensive continues as another high-ranking diplomat tours the area to reassure descendants of the immigrants that they remain "giants in the Earth" -- and valued kin. Wegger Strommen, Norway's ambassador to the United States, will speak at 2 p.m. Friday in UND's Gamble Hall. The lecture is open to the public. He previewed his remarks in a statement released by the embassy: "The Midwest has been fertile ground for the extensive bonds between Norway and the United States -- between families, friends, schools and businesses," Strommen said.